The Large Magellanic Cloud - 27 & 30 October 2022

[MarsG76]

Hello All,

Sharing my latest imaging project which I managed to complete between life and weather... The Large Magellanic Cloud, a companion satellite galaxy of our own Milkyway galaxy, located 163,000 lightyears away, visible only from the southern hemisphere.

I had to image this object at 150mm focal length to fit it into the frame because it's huge in the sky. I imaged this through a Sigma 150mm f2.8 prime lens and exposed in HaLRGB color using two cameras, a QHY268M astronomy camera for the luminance and H-Alpha signal and a stock unmodded Canon 40D DSLR for the RGB color data.
The reason for using the DSLR for the RGB data was to save time, capturing all of the RGB signal simultaneously as opposed to capturing the red, green and blue subs separately through filters. The noise level and overall image quality of the RGB data was not much of a concern as long as there was color data with in the signal, as I only used it to colorise the luminance channel.

Guided with an 80mm refractor at 500mm FL and tracked on a hypertuned CGEM mount for a total exposure time of 7 hours and 23 minutes.

I could have used my astromodded and cooled 40D for the color but I opted for a standard camera because of weight... this setup was piggy backed off my C8 & Refractor setup, and slightly to the side, so using a 700g camera body over a 1.8kg unit made the off balance tracking more accurate at this focal length. As a added bonus, the QHY268M is a similar mass so swapping the two cameras didn't require re-balancing.

Imaging a wide field image like this also helps me pick interesting targets within the galaxy for me to zoom in onto like I did with the Small Magellanic Cloud Project...
 ...so with the immense amount of objects within the LMC, I have quite a few targets for the C8.

If you read through this whole novel of a post, thank you and clear skies...

Mariusz.

 

 

Edited November 3, 2022 by MarsG76